Thissmartbulbgivesnewmeaningtothetermlightmusic

Astro, the first smart home platform for apartment living, is putting a new twist on lightbulbs. Called Twist, this is a smart bulb that doubles as a wireless Airplay-controlled speaker to provide a high quality lighting and sound experience, especially when you have little room to spare.

There are other smart lightbulbs available, but most of them use Bluetooth to stream the music. The downside to Bluetooth is that the audio file has to be compressed, diminishing the sound quality. With Astro’s Twist, on the other hand, the bulb uses Wi-Fi to communicate, ensuring only the best quality music streaming.

Beyond the music features, Twist’s light temperature automatically adjusts based on the time of day, transitioning from a cool white in the morning to a warm yellow light in the evening. This mimicks natural light, making it seem more like being outside.

Twist is an LED lightbulb, so it’s energy saving and lasts quite a long time. The brightness is fully adjustable, and the bulb includes a night-light feature that can be activated using the Twist app.

“Many consumers are frustrated with all the caveats of existing smart home solutions–a lot of these devices are too pricy, complicated to install and only work a fraction of the time. With Twist, we simplified smart home solutions to fit the urban renter’s lifestyle,” said Shaun Springer, CEO and Founder of Astro. “With our first product, Twist is designed for simplicity and accessibility. We’re looking forward to designing a wide range of smart home products in the future that also seamlessly integrate into a city dweller’s life.”

Twist is targeting a launch date of early 2016. In the meantime, you can place your preorder now. Astro is hoping to generate $50,000 in preorder sales to fund production of the first batch of bulbs, which to me sounds like a shaky business model.

You can see the smart bulb in action in the video below. Click this link if the video doesn’t load. For more information and to preorder your Twist, visit Astro’s Web page for the product.